Indeed. My advice to you, venerable Baltimore Brother, would be to get a set of machined rims. Powder-coated rims don't shed aluminum like machined ones do, but as aforementioned by somebody else, if anything works its way under the brake pads (which something irrefutably will, if you actually ride the road,) it will not only damage the powder coat, but, over time, compromise the structural integrity of the rim itself, especially if the "brake surface" is a non-flat shape.

As for the cork pads, do yourself a favor and don't. They are designed for carbon rims and carbon rims only. I can't give you any personal experience, but I don't think anybody could, because they really do not work with aluminum and are recommended by a big nobody. On a tangential note, carbon rims on the road are the stoop-ed.